Chris Ofili's work The Holy Virgin Mary is more than irony, it's a ploy of a trickster artist making the profane sacred and profoundly pressing the reset button as only aesthetics can. It's not every day that elephant dung gets shipped to Brooklyn, playing the part of one of the Holy Mother's breasts, but that's what drifted in with the tide of the 1997 Sensation exhibit hung at the Brooklyn Museum. Swathed in blue and surrounded by a richly articulated golden aura studded with lyrical pornographic butt-butterflies, she soaked my heart and stold into my pores. At that time I didn't really consider the religious iconography with any seriousness and the whole Goddess thing kind of freaked me out, but still I was smitten, and quite amused to see the hysterics she provoked in Guiliani. And I'm sure the ferrets appreciated a break.
My cake, shown below, was no parody, it was devotion. My friend recently came across this picture she took of it. She reminds me that I served it to her husband, a passionate conservative, on his birthday. I had completely forgotten. He must have borne it graciously, or else I would have remembered. Years later I was at their house and noticed a book on the Virgin Mary I wanted to borrow. Turned out it was his.
5 comments:
Is she one of those infamous liburahl profane art works that so agitated the Limbaughites awhile back because someone's tax dollars were involved?
Gawrsh. She's purty. I like her dress.
uncure: to reheel a sole
Now, that is amazing and crazy like art should be. Pity it was eaten. Or maybe not. Maybe that was the communion.
What did you use for the dung?
What did you use for the dung?
I nominate this Question of the Week.
floute: 1) to flout via conspicuous nonuse of something (as denoted by the silent e), as in She flouteed her wealth by setting service for seven when only three were invited to done; 2) to light a cigar that is in turn used to light another cigar after which the initial cigar is discarded.
I think I just used a big pile of chocolate frosting, but if I could do it again, I'd hope to use a chocolate meringue. What would you use?
We are not alone:
Method 1
Excessive Zeal
oetea: t
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